• Question: what is plastic made of

    Asked by Black dragon to Alex, Ali, Kerry on 20 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Alex Pool

      Alex Pool answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      So plastics are a type of chemical, so have names like proylene, ethylene, ethane. They’re the basic building blocks and can then be turned into other types of plastic like polyethylene. So it all requires some chemistry.

      But we can get those basic building blocks from plants, oil and natural gas. For instance in America most plastics come from natural gas.

    • Photo: Alison Thomson

      Alison Thomson answered on 20 Nov 2014:

      Plastics are a type of building block made from plants, or oil and gas. We extract chemicals like propylene, ethylene and ethane and use them to create polypropylene, polyethylene and polythene.

      The original building blocks are called monomers (which means ‘one’) and we join loads of them together to make polymers (poly = many).

      Good question!

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